Former Democratic New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo has denied new allegations that he worked on his memoir “American Crisis: Leadership Lessons from the COVID-19 Pandemic” during the height of the titular COVID-19 pandemic.
Cuomo’s memoir earned a $5.1 million book deal. The chapters of Cuomo’s book are formatted with a date, followed by the number of new cases, hospitalizations, and deaths on that given date.
While the email chain contained no specific mention of a forthcoming book, Cuomo speechwriter Jamie Malinowski responded to the chain with an April 18, 2020, email describing how another staffer had been working on the “tick tock,” in a potential reference to the timeline of COVID-19 response events. Malinowski then wrote, “Here is a preface I’ve been working on,” followed by several passages that appeared to have been written in Cuomo’s authorial voice. One portion of the staffer’s preface described how “I would deliver the State of the State address,” and another said, “during my first nine years as governor, we created a record of accomplishments across a wide range of issues.”
Cuomo’s 10th State of the State Address took place on Jan. 8, 2020, more than three months before Malinowski’s preface email.
The Empire Center noted the email exchanges between March 30 and April 18, 2020, as evidence to corroborate assessments made in a November 2021 impeachment investigation report against Cuomo.
According to the impeachment report, the New York State Department of Health discovered “that for a period of approximately two weeks in April and/or May 2020, certain fatalities in nursing home facilities due to COVID-19 were not included in the published data. Specifically, deaths reported by nursing homes after approximately 5:00 p.m. each day were not included in totals for that day, and therefore the published data was incomplete.”
Cuomo’s Team Denies ‘Defamatory’ Allegations
Rich Azzopardi, a spokesman for Cuomo, disputed the allegations raised by the Empire Center.Azzopardi also addressed Malinowski’s email describing a “preface,” saying, “of course a speechwriter would produce language in the Governor’s voice.”
The Empire Center included Azzopardi’s comments in an update to their original report, but the Cuomo spokesman posted on Twitter that the report is “still false & defamatory.”
“Had the @empirecenter reached out to me before the post, much of this could have been cleared up on the front end,” Azzopardi added.
Morvillo also said any work DeRosa did to assist Cuomo on the book was done on a voluntary basis outside of normal business hours.
Malinoski told the New York Post he had no knowledge Cuomo was working on a book. He told the publication that his “preface” was meant to be a “narrative” for speeches or discussions but acknowledged, “I guess that could be used in a book.”